Recent advances in the video and computer technology have yielded the capability of converting images of photographic quality into digital data. This digital form of an image is called digitized image. The digitized image can be stored and/or modified by data processing equipment. The digitized image can also be displayed on a video monitor. One problem that is commonly encountered is that the digitized image from the camera cannot be fully displayed on the video monitor. This results from the fact that some video monitors are made to show only part of the image that is "seen" by the video camera. In other words, for the image to be displayed by the video monitor in a manner that fills the video monitor screen, portions of the image originally captured by the camera will not be displayed by the video monitor. The video monitor is "overscanning" the image. The image is, therefore, commonly referred to as the "overscanned" image. However, it is important when digitizing images from a video camera to be able to view the complete image that is being captured.
IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 10, March, 1988, page 10 discussed the overscan problem and proposes a solution of image reduction on a dedicated display.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,569, entitled "Method for Adaptively Masking Off a Video Window in an Overscanned Image" to Morton et al discloses a method for extracting an image from an overscanned image where the overscanned image includes picture element information that is desired to not be included in the extracted image.
It is the object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for displaying an overscanned image on a video monitor together with the image as it would normally appear at least in part.